United Kingdom | Loss of nationality confirmed for a teenager who joined ISIS

(London) British justice confirmed on Friday the loss of nationality of Shamima Begum, a Londoner who joined the Islamic State (IS) group when she was 15 years old, an emblematic case in the United Kingdom of the question of family return jihadists.

The Court of Appeal “unanimously” rejected the appeal of Shamima Begum, now 24, against this decision taken in 2019, Judge Sue Carr said.

Currently living in a camp in Syria, the young woman, who claims to be a victim of trafficking and whose first appeal had been rejected, cannot therefore return to the United Kingdom.

“It can be argued that the decision in the case of M^she Begum was severe, but it can also be argued that M^she Begum is responsible for her own misfortune,” said the magistrate while rendering the decision.

The court’s task was to decide whether the decision to strip nationality was illegal. “We concluded that this was not the case and the appeal is dismissed,” declared the magistrate.

Shamima Begum’s lawyer, Daniel Furner, said her defense would continue “the fight until she gets justice and returns home.”

Married to a jihadist

In the United Kingdom, his case is emblematic of the delicate question of the return of the families of jihadists captured or killed in Syria and Iraq since the fall in 2019 of the IS “caliphate”.

Shamima Begum left London at the beginning of 2015 with two friends. Her defense presents her as the victim of trafficking set up by ISIS in order to marry her off. In Syria, she married an IS jihadist eight years her senior a few days after her arrival and had two children who died at a young age.

After fleeing the fighting, she found herself in a Syrian camp in February 2019. While pregnant with a child who died shortly after birth, sparking criticism of the British government, she expressed a wish to return to the United Kingdom.

But his nationality was stripped of his citizenship in 2019 by the British Home Office for reasons of national security.

An “illegal” disqualification according to another lawyer for the young woman, Samantha Knights, who denounced during the hearing in October before the Court of Appeal in London the “state failings” and the failure of the authorities to prevent the departure during the teenage years.

For his part, Interior Ministry lawyer James Eadie argued that “the fact that someone is radicalized, and may have been manipulated, is not in contradiction with the assessment that he poses a risk to national security.

“If the government believes Shamima Begum has committed an offence, she should be prosecuted in a British court. Forfeiture of nationality is not an answer,” responded Friday the director of the British human rights NGO Reprieve, Maya Foa.

The Ministry of the Interior welcomed the decision of the court of appeal. “Our priority remains maintaining the security of the United Kingdom and we will vigorously defend any decision taken to this end,” stressed a spokesperson for the Home Office.

In early 2020, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the decision to strip her nationality did not make Shamima Begum stateless, because she was Bangladeshi through her parents. But Dhaka refused to welcome him.

The latest decision handed down in early 2023 in this case recognized that there was a “credible suspicion” that Shamima Begum had been trafficked to Syria for the purposes of “sexual exploitation” and also that the State committed “failures” by allowing her to go to this country.

But the judge considered that this “suspicion” was “insufficient” for the defense arguments to prevail.

In 2020, the young woman sparked outrage in the United Kingdom in an interview where she expressed no regret, and wore a full black veil. The following year she begged the British government to let her return.